Our Sticky Fingers Attorney General
Texas elected itself a brand spankin’ new Attorney General – who needs a spankin’.
First off, he’s probably facing felony criminal charges and is likely to be indicted while he’s a sitting attorney general. He has already been fined by the Texas State Securities Board for hanky-panky.
And now, come to find out, he’s got sticky fingers.
A Dallas lawyer name Joe Joplin went through a metal detector at the Collin county courthouse. He was in a hurry.
A few hours later, he realized he’d left a tray of three pens at the metal detector. One was a gift from his wife — a $1,000 Montblanc.
He says he’s not really into fancy pens but it was a special gift from his wife so he went to hunt it down.
“It came back like a Kodak moment. I knew I’d put it in a separate bin and that second plate didn’t come out,” Joplin recalled in a recent interview.
He rushed to the security entrance and the pen was gone. Joplin talked to the sheriff’s deputies, who told him that shortly after Joplin went through, another man picked up a tray of pens on top of the machine.
The deputies didn’t recall the other man. Joplin asked to see the video of the security camera but the deputies said they couldn’t help.
Joplin, frustrated and a bit frightened of telling his wife, wrote to an old friend, “just to vent.” The boyhood pal was Collin County Sheriff Terry Box.
In an Aug. 14, 2013, email, Joplin recounted the details. “The loss of my pen is my responsibility,” he wrote, but he also thought a lost and found procedure might be instituted.
Sheriff Box did better than that. He ordered up the video tape.
That’s when the sheriff recognized State Senator and soon-to-be Texas attorney general Ken Paxton take one of the three pens out of the basket and put it in his pocket.
“It looked like he took a pen and put it in his pocket out of the tray,” Box said.
He asked a deputy to call Paxton and see whether he had it. He looked. He did. A day or so later, Paxton gave the pricey rollerball pen to a deputy to return to Joplin, the sheriff said.
So Paxton walked around for a year with a $1,000 pen in his pocket and never noticed? Really? Did he think the Montblanc Fairy left it under his pillow? I don’t know about you but I don’t keep up with pens very long – unless, of course, it was a $1,000 pen.
Paxton’s spokesman says it was “a simple mistake.” Yeah.
I’m gonna suggest that when he takes office, we put a chain on all the office supplies. No telling how much this guy could cost us in staplers and laptops that he mistakenly takes home.
Thanks to Tim for the heads up.
Typical of the “moral majority”, as they love to call themselves.
1Bunch of hypocrites.
Theocracy, kleptocracy, get used to it, you’ll just luv it.
2Charming man. I know when I was in audio-visual dept at library where I worked, I put security strips not only on pens and pencils (they disappear fast) but barcoded keyboards and anything else that might be looking for a new home.
3This would make a great episode in season one of “1st World Problems.” You can afford the pen, but yet, you’re still going to filch it out of a tray that’s not yours.
Hopefully at some point both the attorney and attorney general are seen participating in a case involving a defendant or plaintiff who earns less income than one pen per month. (That would be $1000.)
4I’ll bet Paxton has some oceanfront property in Nebraska he wants to sell us also too.
5Aw, see? Now that is an illustration of what my mother meant by “God is gonna get ya.”
6What a fine and upstanding Attorney General we have been inflicted with.
7He’s the kind of guy you have to watch–better count your fingers after shaking his hand.
8I have to admit knowing Attorney Paxton for some years. He always reminds me of tv character Herb Tarlek. Not in the outlandish way Tarlek dressed but in his always on the make demeanor. Plus like a used car salesman, after shaking his hand you immediately want to find something to wipe the imagined slime off yours.
9Is it just me, or is it really a picture of a younger, plumper Chevy Chase?
10I’m still recovering from being gobsmacked about a pen that costs $1000. You can get one for a couple of bucks that writes just as well. That kind of trinket is nature’s way of saying that you make way too damn much money and have no grasp of the real world that 98% of the people live in, or of the good that any number of charities could do with that money minus the $2 for a decent pen.
11This is irony on a Greek tragedy scale. A majority of voters in our beloved state vote for a man about to be indicted to become its chief legal officer. What’s next, Michael Vick for dog catcher? Tom DeLay for ethics officer? Hell, let’s just vote in Dan Patrick as humanitarian of the year.
12Rhea, remember when kids graduating 8th grade got a fountain pen as a gift? It was usually a Waterman and could be bought darn near anywhere, even at some cigar stores. It was a really big deal back then. I wonder what this jerk’s wife was celebrating when she gave him a thousand dollar pen? Inquiring minds want to know.
13If he was a Democrat he’ll already be in jail and Faux “news” would be trumpeting it all over.
14Marion: Isn’t he an improvement on the previous one? Now the elected governor?
15Larry – That’s a low blow. Or, should I have said, “Low bar”?
16I think he must be from Mississippi!
17yeah,but…….Eric Holder is black.
18Seems there are a lot of “simple” mistakes made by “simple” people in Texas.
19I suspect the celebratory/gift pen from the Mrs. maybe came when he won his first case as an attorney-at-law. Or some other momentous occasion.
Regardless of the cost, ….the pen didn’t belong to the newly elected Attorney General…. and he knew that. He not only broke the law… he broke one of those Commandments that from the Good Book that Texas Republicans are always cherry-picking quotes from.
That Texas Republicans have elected such a man to be the Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the State of Texas…. says more about Texas Republicans than about the man.
20This is one of those cases where the pen IS mightier than the sword. It revealed the absence of integrity in one charged with enforcing it.
21Why in heaven’s name did Republicans vote for this clown in the primaries? They could have voted for Dan Branch. I don’t particularly like Branch’s politics, but at least he appears to be honest. Them again, why would any one vote for Glen Hegar when they could’ve voted for Mike Collier.
22Glad NY has an honest AG (who, with his beautiful wife, falls into ‘cutest couple’ territory). Oh, TX.
23Look at the upside, we clearly have an AG with very discerning tastes, he unhesitatingly picked the $1K Montblanc pen from the other two presumably plainly plain ones.
24We can look forward to savoring only the finest grade graft and corruption possible.
How could Paxton be so stupid to think he could get away with stealing this man’s $1,000 pen knowing that there was video surveillance and tape recording all of this at the Collin County Courthouse? Do we really need one more dishonest and stupid politician in our government?
Please tell the truth Anthony Holm, it was not a honest mistake. Paxton stole that man’s pen and it is a Class A Misdemeanor in Texas!
Somebody needs to call the law, oh, never mind he is the law. What a joke. . .
25Does Montblanc even have a roller ball pen? I though most of their pens were fountain pens. In any case, giving someone a celebratory $1000 pen is akin to buying your son a new car when he graduates from high school without a felony conviction.
26Let’s not get hung up on overpriced bling: the pen wasn’t his.
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